Installing KDE software via MacPorts/Fink/Homebrew

Installing using Homebrew

Updates are often shipped in couple of days after official upstream release.
As of March 2019, the latest available and supported version is KDE Applications 18.12.3, Frameworks 5.56.

You can tap this repository into your Homebrew. It adds KDE Frameworks 5 packages (and all their dependencies) and some applications that already make use of them (e.g. Kate and Kwrite). As of March 2019 the repository still is experimental as the developers try to get them into a working state. Hints and patches are welcome.

Installing using Fink

As of October 2017, the latest available and supported version is KDE SC 4.14.6.

The Fink packages allow you to install KDE SC 4 as either Qt/X11 or Qt/Mac (native) packages by selecting either packages ending in "-x11" or "-mac", for example "kdebase4-x11" and "kdebase4-mac".

Additionally, the Fink packages allow the running of the Plasma desktop in X11 mode. Just install "kdebase4-workspace-x11" to install it.

The Fink KDE software packages will be installed in /sw/opt/kde4/x11 or /sw/opt/kde4/mac respectively. They also are able to start D-Bus for you as long as you run "/sw/bin/init.sh" normally, or when you open a terminal, if you have run the path setup script in the Fink installer.

Running KDE Applications

Please see the distribution notes for MacPorts / Fink / Homebrew formulas you are using. You may need to run the following steps once after installation: